Keep Learning

Sucrose occurs naturally in all fruits and vegetables. When plants undergo photosynthesis to transform energy from the sun into food, they create sucrose. Sugarcane and sugar beets offer the largest quantities of sucrose, making them common for commercial use in preparing refined sugar. Refining sugar requires pressing the vegetable matter to extract juice, boiling the juice to concentrate it to the point that crystals form and removal of the crystals using a centrifuge. These crystals of raw sugar still contain impurities and require further refining by washing and filtering to produce the white crystals used in the kitchen.